Pronunciation guide for UNIX

How do I pronounce vi , or ! , or /* , or ...?
You can start a very long and pointless discussion by wondering about this topic on the net. Some people say vye, some say vee-eye (the vi manual suggests this) and some Roman numerologists say six. How you pronounce vi has nothing to do with whether or not you are a true Unix wizard.

Similarly, you'll find that some people pronounce char as care, and that there are lots of ways to say # or /* or ! or tty or /etc. No one pronunciation is correct - enjoy the regional dialects and accents.

comes from old card punch phenomenon where punching ! code made a loud noise; however, this pronunciation is used in the (non-computerized) publishing and typesetting industry in the U.S. too, so ...
Alternatively it could have come from comic books, where the words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that character's head. When one character shoots another, it is common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed. That balloon contained the word "!" -- hence, "!" == "Bang!"

!

store

from FORTH

!

dammit

as in "quit, dammit!" while exiting vi and hoping one hasn't clobbered a file too badly

#

octothorpe

Otherwise known as the numeral sign... In cartography, it is also a symbol for village: eight fields around a central square, and this is the source of its name. Octothorp means eight fields ~ Robert Bringhurst (The Elements of Typographic Style (3rd edition, 2004 p314)

A related term (also involving Octal/8) is octalthorpe (Bell System)

#

unequal

e.g. Modula-2

$

string

from BASIC

$

escape

from TOPS-10

$

Sonne

In the socialist countries, they used and are using all kinds of IBM clones (hardware + software). It was a common practice just to rename everything (IBM 360 → ESER 1040, etc...).
Of course the "dollar" sign had to be renamed - it became the "international currency symbol" which looks like a circle with 4 rays spreading from it: ¤
Because it looks like a (small) shining sun, in the German Democratic Republic it was usually called "Sonne" (sun).

&

donald duck

from the Danish "Anders And", which means "Donald Duck"

*

splat

from DEC "spider" glyph

*

Nathan Hale

"I have but one asterisk for my country."

*

funny button

at Pacific Bell, * was referred to by employees as the "funny button", which did not please management at all when it became part of the corporate logo of Pacific Telesis, the holding company...